So I've learned to trust game consoles and digital storefronts again - mostly out of necessity. I'm guessing it was cheaper to pay me off in this case rather than to send a guy to present flimsy evidence to a judge. Microsoft settled out of court and sent me a check. I was seeking damages in the form of money I had spent on digital games and DLC that was no longer accessible - which totaled around $400. Eventually in 2014 I held Microsoft's feet to the fire and jumped through their hoops for legal arbitration. I went back to gaming on PC for the next decade, I didn't trust consoles and online purchases in the least bit after that.

There was no way (and still no way) to place my account in good standing. I contacted Microsoft and they basically told me 'you shouldn't have been hacking'. I was banned from Xbox Live for 999 years. Basically someone used a program to randomly generate a console ID that matched my console's identifier, and I woke up one morning to find out I couldn't sign into Xbox Live. Some hack got released online where it was easy for people to guess or infer something like this console ID - I don't know the particulars.

I bought my 360 at launch, and thought the online digital storefront was pretty cool so I had picked up a few arcade games and some DLC (you couldn't buy full games back then). It's the first time I got burned on digital purchasing.

I had this happen to me with my first Xbox 360 way back in the day.

Console id ps3 free